It’s time to put the vivo V29 5G‘s sibling, the equally flashy yet more affordable vivo V29e 5G, through its paces.

vivo formally announced the newest addition to the V29 family in the Philippines last month, with the phone priced at P18,999 (around $339) at launch. You can purchase it online on the company website, Lazada, Shopee, and TikTok Shop and in physical stores nationwide, as well as through Home Credit with a 0% interest rate for as low as P762 ($14) per month.

Right now, you can pick up the vivo V29e 5G for as low as P16,199 ($290) on Lazada for a limited time while supplies last. So, should you add this smartphone to your Christmas wish list, especially after the discount? Check out our review for our thoughts on the brand’s latest mainstream offering.

Not to be confused with the vivo V29e 5G for the Indian market with a different rear design, the local variant we reviewed sports a similar back cover to its predecessor, the vivo V27e. In fact, the Lavender Purple edition of the previous-generation model looks pretty identical to the V29e 5G in the Ice Creek Blue colorway, which is featured in our photos. It also retains the squared-off chassis with rounded corners that’s still popular these days.

Not that we’re complaining, though. Unless you own the previous model, the vivo V29e 5G flaunts an eye candy of a design with matching sides and sheets of curved-edge glass on the front and back for a more comfortable grip. On top of that, our blue unit has a glossy pearlescent finish that adds to its premium vibe while doing a credible job of hiding fingerprints and smudges.

Like the vivo V29 5G we reviewed earlier, this model is one of the prettiest handsets in its price range and should appeal to users who are after a functional yet flashy design. Not everyone appreciates curved screens, which can make typing and playing mobile games more difficult, especially if you’re opting to go caseless.

It’s also worth noting that the vivo V29e 5G comes with an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance. This means the phone is designed to withstand occasional splashes as well as limited use in the rain, making it suited for a tropical country like the Philippines.

Operating the unit with one hand isn’t ideal because of the screen size, but the narrow display bezels certainly help make operating the V29e 5G easier, while the flat edges make for a device that’s easier to hold, albeit also slightly less ergonomic than its curved-screen counterparts.

The vivo V29e 5G doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack or stereo speakers. The mono speaker is located at the bottom of the device and performs adequately for medium- to high-volume listening.

There’s no physical fingerprint reader here. You can unlock the screen via the biometrics sensor embedded in the display. It works great most of the time unless your fingers are too moist.

The AMOLED display measures 6.67 inches, a bit larger than the V27e’s 6.62-inch panel. It’s brighter, too, offering up to 1,150 nits of peak brightness, and runs at a smooth 120Hz, with the option to set the refresh rate to 60Hz or Smart Switch, which automatically chooses the refresh rate for an app, to save battery. This is par for the course for a midrange device. The same can be said about the vivo V29e’s FHD+ resolution and 20:9 screen aspect ratio.

As expected, outdoor use isn’t a challenge, thanks to the panel’s higher-than-usual brightness output. Colors are also particularly vibrant out of the box, but not oversaturated to our eyes. Since the display is your interaction point with the V29e 5G, we appreciate that it’s bright, colorful, and sufficiently clear for everything we use the phone for.

When it comes to the rear-facing camera system, vivo has gone with the “addition by subtraction” principle this time around. The main camera is still 64 megapixels — and it performs just fine especially when the lighting is good — but the V29e 5G only has two cameras on the back, as opposed to three on the previous generation.

Not to worry, though, as vivo has dropped the pair of 2-megapixel filler sensors from the V27e, opting for an 8-megapixel ultrawide shooter instead. This allows for a more versatile camera experience without losing the ability to capture closeup macro shots of plants, food, and whatnot, since you can also shoot macro images with the primary camera’s 2x zoom option. You get a dedicated Night mode on both rear cameras, too, although the low-light results tend to be pretty good even without resorting to the said shooting mode.

Shot on the vivo V29e 5G’s rear camera system

The other notable upgrade is vivo’s latest Aura Light 2.0 ring light, which the V29e 5G shares with the standard version. The company says Aura Light 2.0 is much brighter and covers a larger area than the original, making it far more useful in low-light situations while eliminating the harshness of traditional LED flash. It comes with a color-temperature slider, too, allowing you to take pictures with a warmer or cooler tone depending on your preference. We wish it also offered brightness controls to make it more usable in certain scenarios, though.

In dim, warm-toned settings, switching to a cool Aura Light will lead to a more balanced and natural-looking skin tone. When shooting in a bar where the lighting is sometimes cool and blue, on the other hand, using a warm Aura Light can deliver the same results, which is impossible to achieve with a standard smartphone flash.

SEE ALSO: How to shoot better portraits with vivo V29 5G’s Aura Light 2.0 [Video]

The vivo V29e 5G, like the regular V29 5G, also packs a 50-megapixel front camera in a punch hole coupled with a pretty wide lens, in case you want to take a group selfie or show more of the background. You can zoom in up to 2x digitally if you prefer a tighter shot, and phase-detection auto-focus is onboard as well.

There are plenty of filters and portrait options to choose from, giving you a ton of ways to take advantage of the smartphone’s sharp selfie camera, which is just as impressive as the main camera at the back. Additionally, you can enable Night mode on the front-facing cam, and depending on how dim your surroundings are, its effects can range from subtle to substantial.

Sample selfies

Video recording is capped at 1080p on the front and back, likely due to the limitations of the Snapdragon chip vivo opted for here. The video quality is actually quite clean, and you can record at up to 60 fps using the rear camera.

Inside, the vivo V29e 5G lists some familiar specifications, including a 6nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G chipset kitted with 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Unfortunately, the storage technology is a bit of a letdown, especially given the phone’s local pricing.

Our benchmark scores are identical to what you’d expect from other Snapdragon 695-based phones like the HONOR X9a 5G, OPPO Reno8 T 5G, and OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G. Casual games run smoothly, while resource-intensive games like Genshin Impact and Diablo Immortal need to be toned down to be playable at a solid 30 frames per second. vivo has locked the screen to 60Hz when gaming, so don’t expect games to run higher than 60 fps.

The vivo V29e 5G doesn’t heat up considerably under heavy load, and long periods of gaming saw minimal dips in performance. It also supports virtual RAM expansion up to 8GB for a total of 20GB dynamic RAM, if you don’t mind giving up storage for marginally better multitasking performance. Apps open quickly, and we didn’t notice any significant lag when swiping between screens. Personally, we think the phone would run totally fine even without allocating a significant amount of storage for virtual RAM.

Battery life is one area in which the vivo V29e 5G excels compared to other devices around the same price — or even higher. The phone has a 4,800mAh cell that easily lasts more than a day with mixed use and supports 44-watt fast charging out of the box. This allows you to recharge the battery from zero to 100% in about an hour and 20 minutes.

After an hour of playing Genshin Impact, we had the battery down by roughly 15%, which is pretty great considering the size of the display. In PCMark’s battery-endurance test, our unit pulled off 17 hours and 6 minutes with the brightness set to 50%.

Final thoughts

The vivo V29e 5G isn’t the fastest phone in its price bracket, but it makes up for its lack of processing power with a gorgeous IP54-rated design, a bright and responsive AMOLED screen, and an improved set of cameras alongside a mini ring light that can switch between cool and warm light on the fly. It’s a good pick if you can buy it at a discount or care mostly about taking nice pictures with the front and rear cameras.

vivo V29e 5G specs

• 6.67-inch E4 AMOLED display, FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, 1,150 nits peak brightness
• 6nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 processor with 5G
• Adreno 619 GPU
• 12GB LPDDR4X RAM
• 256GB UFS 2.2 storage
• Dual 64-megapixel main, 8-megapixel ultrawide rear cameras
• 50-megapixel front camera
• Under-display fingerprint reader
• 4,800mAh battery with 44-watt fast wired charging
• Funtouch OS 13 based on Android 13
• Colors: Forest Black, Ice Creek Blue

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